Northwood firefighter inspired her children

Georgia A. Bailey, a former security guard who was one of the Northwood Fire Department's first female volunteer firefighters, died of respiratory failure Saturday in the Northwood home of a daughter. She was 61.

Mrs. Bailey had suffered from pulmonary disease for years, and was on the University of Michigan Medical Center's waiting list for a lung transplant, her daughter Robin Wieczorek said.

Mrs. Bailey joined the fire department in 1982 and remained a member until she retired on disability in 1997, Ms. Wieczorek said. Her daughter said Mrs. Bailey also was a paramedic and an emergency medical technician.

“My mother was constantly learning new things to better herself. She was someone we could look up to and be proud of,” Ms. Wieczorek said.

“She inspired us to do our best with everything we did,” Mrs. Bailey's other daughter, Kelly Bradfield, said.

Mrs. Bailey also was a security officer for several firms, most of the time assigned to patrolling businesses in downtown Toledo.

In the early 1970s, she sold bus tokens and passes from a TARTA booth at the corner of Madison Avenue and Superior Street. She and her family then moved to Florida, where she worked as a dispatcher for the Punta Gorda police and as a deputy for the Lee County Sheriff's Department.

The family returned to northwest Ohio in 1978, and she enrolled at Davis College, where she received an associate's degree qualifying her to work as a nurse's assistant. She then did an employment stint at the St. Luke's Hospital emergency room.

Mrs. Bailey and her husband, Earl, were married for 45 years. They had met when she was 12 and he was 16, and lived over the years in East Toledo and Northwood.

Mrs. Bailey grew up in East Toledo and graduated from Waite High School. She was a longtime member of Salem United Methodist Church.